ADVOCATES FOR FAITH & FREEDOM
FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE: Wednesday, sEPTEMBER 3, 2025
CONTACT: Lori Sanada
media@FAITH-FREEDOM.COM
Murrieta, CA — Advocates for Faith & Freedom, a leading advocate for the protection of religious liberty and constitutional freedoms, today announced the filing of its important brief with the United States Supreme Court in the case Miller v. McDonald. The brief urges the Supreme Court to protect the fundamental right to religious liberty and reinstate it as the cornerstone of the First Amendment.
At issue in Miller v. McDonald is New York’s decision to remove all religious exemptions from its compulsory vaccination law for schoolchildren. New York had allowed religious exemptions for over 50 years. When it amended its law, however, some of the law’s sponsors in the New York legislature spoke very negatively about people who hold religious objections to vaccination, calling their religious beliefs “trash” or “fake.” One legislator called a people who have religious objections to vaccination “a heretic.” The Governor of New York, Kathy Hochul, had previously received negative press for telling a congregation that people who had religious objections to the COVID-19 vaccine “aren’t listening to God” and that their religious concerns are “not truth.”
The Petitioners in Miller v. McDonald are Amish families who live an isolated, devoutly religious life away from modern day society. The Petitioners object to the state-mandated vaccinations on religious grounds due to some vaccinations’ reliance on the use of aborted fetal cells during their manufacturing and testing. While New York’s law does not allow any religious exemptions, it does allow non-religious, medical exemptions. The law also does not apply to everyone in New York schools. For example, the law does not require schoolteachers or other adults who work in the schools to be vaccinated, only children. The law also does not address the myriad locations where children spend time or might contract an illness outside of school.
The Amish schools and families in Miller v. McDonald have been fined $118,000.00 for failing to comply with New York vaccine law. New York officials know of Petitioners’ religious objections but are still requiring they pay the onerous fines. The outcome of this case has the potential to shape the scope of religious freedom protections for generations.
“Our founding fathers enshrined religious liberty as our first freedom because they understood that to have a free society men and women must be able to live out their sincerely held faith without coercion. This is essential to both democracy and human dignity,” said Erin Mersino of Advocates for Faith and Freedom. “We are urging the Supreme Court to stop New York from shaking down the Amish community with ruinous fines for simply staying true to their faith beliefs.”
Advocates for Faith & Freedom’s Amicus Curiae brief is available here.
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Advocates for Faith & Freedom is a non-profit law firm dedicated to protecting constitutional and religious liberty in the courts. Our mission is to engage in cases that will uphold our religious liberty and America’s heritage and to educate Americans about our fundamental constitutional rights.